Sunday, April 16, 2017

100 Years Ago, When Lenin Arrived at the Finland Station

When
Vladimir Lenin reached Petrograd one hundred years ago today on
the famous “sealed
train” that traveled from Switzerland through Germany, the
situation both internally and at the front appeared to have
stabilized.The
temporary truce between the new Provisional Government and the
rebellious masses, however, largely sidestepped the major issue that
ushered in the February
Revolution: the war. When the aggressive military aims of the
Provisional Government were revealed, the “April Days”
demonstrations proved that the Revolution was still very much alive.After
February, Tsar
Nicholas II had been placed under arrest and a provisional
government was formed. At the head of the government was Prince
Georgy Lvov, a ceremonial figure who represented the last link
with the old regime, but the cabinet was dominated by Liberals
frightened by the very revolution that had placed them in power.The
Foreign Ministry was Pavel Milyukov, historic leader of the Kadet
Party, and the Ministry of War was Aleksander
Guchkov, Octobrist and
chairman of the Duma. The Ministry of Justice was assumed by
Socialist Revolutionary Alexander
Kerensky, the only socialist in the cabinet.The
primary task of the new government was to guarantee the Entente and
Russian capitalists that the war would continue. As Milyukov
expressed to a French journalist, “The Russian Revolution was made
in order to remove the obstacles on Russia’s war to victory.”The
revolutionary struggle in February created democratically-elected
workers’ councils called Soviets as in the 1905
Revolution, only now these also included soldiers, first in
Petrograd and then in all the provinces of the Empire.On
March 1, the Petrograd’s Soviet published Order
n.1, which declared, “the orders of military commission of the
State Duma should be executed only in cases where they do not
contradict the orders and decisions of the Council of Workers’ and
Soldiers’ Deputies.”Additionally,
the revolution had brought new, unparalleled freedoms and an end to
continual police harassment. When the British journalist Morgan
Philips Price arrived by train in Moscow on April 6, he noted:

I
walked through the streets and soon remarked the change that had
taken place since I was here last. Not a single policeman or gendarme
was to be seen. They had all been arrested and sent off to the front
in small detachments. Moscow was without any police and seemed to be
getting on quite happily without them.

The
Petrograd Soviet was dominated by socialist forces, particularly
the Mensheviks.
They argued that the government should remain firmly in the hands of
the bourgeoisie and the working classes should play the role of
counterweight to merely pressure the new Provisional Government.In
their view, Russia was not ready for a socialist revolution. A
situation of “dual power” developed quickly: a Provisional
Government representing the interests of capitalists and landlords on
the one side, while the real power was in the hands of the soviets
and working classes.On
March 23, the United States entered the war. On that same day,
Petrograd buried the victims of the February Revolution. Eight
hundred thousand people marched to Mars Field, the largest
mobilization that year.The
funeral became a hymn to international solidarity and a cry for
peace; in his classic History
of the Russian Revolution,
Leon Trotsky wrote that the “common demonstration of Russian
soldiers with Austro-German war-prisoners was a vivid hope-giving
fact which made it possible to believe that the revolution, in spite
of all, did carry within itself the foundation of a better world.”Tsereteli
and the Menshevik soviet leaders guaranteed external support to the
Provisional Government and believed the war should continue, albeit
in a “defensive and without annexations” posture. This
intermediate position attempted to straddle the government’s
mandate to continue the war as if nothing had happened and the
soldiers’ and workers’ expectations of a separate peace.On
March 14, the Petrograd Soviet issued
a manifesto calling upon “the peoples of Europe to speak
and act out jointly and resolutely to foster peace.” But the appeal
to German and Austrian workers, which declared, “Democratic Russia
cannot threaten freedom and civilization,” and “we will firmly
defend our own freedom from any kind of reactionary encroachments,”
was read by many as pro-war.As
Trotsky argued,
“Milyukov’s paper was a thousand times right when it declared
that ‘the manifesto, although it began with so typical a note of
pacifism, developed an ideology essentially common to us and to all
our allies.’”Before
the February Revolution, the war was grinding to a halt, as soldiers
refused to fight, deserted in the hundreds of thousands, and
fraternized with German soldiers.Dating
back to Christmas 1914, this fraternization included dances and
exchange of cognac and cigarettes between German and Russian
soldiers, and continued for years without producing an open rebellion
against the officers. Historian Marc Ferro cites a letter about the
officers from a Russian soldier written to his wife:

The
war? They sit there while we are in the muck, they get 500 or 600
roubles when we have only 75. They were obsessed by unfairness. And
then, although it’s the soldiers who have to bear the hardest part
of the war, it’s different for them, they are covered with medals,
crosses, rewards; but that lot are a long way from the battlefield.

At
first the generals attempted to block news of the rebellion in
Petrograd from the troops at the front, only to have German troops
inform Russian soldiers of the February Revolution, further eroding
soldiers’ trust in their officers. Paradoxically, the revolution
brought an end to desertions. The soldiers expected an imminent end
to the war, and they did not want to undermine the new government’s
ability to negotiate peace.Reports
from the front showed that the mood was “Support the front, but
don’t join the offensive.” As weeks passed, the commander of the
Fifth Army reported, “The fighting spirit has declined . . .
politics, which has spread through all layers of the army, has made
the whole military mass desire one thing — to end the war and go
home.” During the first week of April, eight thousand soldiers
deserted from the northern and western fronts.The
return of Lenin and the publication of his April Theses brought a
fundamental shift in Bolshevik policies, arguing for “no support”
for the bourgeois and imperialist Provisional Government.The
Bolshevik positions under the direction of Stalin and Kamenev had
been moderate and continued to support the position of “Democratic
Dictatorship of the Proletariat and the Peasantry” to carry out a
bourgeois revolution as developed by Lenin in 1905.In
an article published in Pravda,
the party paper, Kamenev argued that the “April Theses”
represented Lenin’s “personal opinion,” and that “Lenin’s
general scheme appears to us unacceptable since it starts from the
the assumption that the bourgeois revolution is finished and counts
on the immediate transformation of this revolution into a socialist
revolution.”At
the March 1917 Bolshevik conference, Stalin also supported a possible
unification with internationalist Mensheviks “along the lines
of Zimmerwald-Kiental.”
Yet even in 1915, Lenin was skeptical of the pacifist anti-war
terminology of the majority in Zimmerwald that opened the door for
supporting the war, calling them “Kauskyite-shitheads.”When
he returned in April, Lenin argued for the left Zimmerwald to break
the Zimmerwald majority completely, including the Mensheviks, which
Stalin and many other Bolsheviks had wanted to unite with.The
tireless Lenin won over the party. The Bolsheviks could count on
79,000 members, of which 15,000 were located in Petrograd. While
still a small minority force, especially in the Petrograd Soviet,
they were strong enough to have a role in the events.Neither
the government nor the Menshevik leaders at the head of the Soviet
wanted the new political crisis that emerged in the second half of
April. Milyukov and Russian capitalists had reassured allies about
Russia’s role in the conflict, and aspired to the seizure of
Ottoman Empire-held Dardanelles.However,
Milyukov realized that without some agreement with the Soviet, the
troops would have hardly accepted and fought for the government’s
plans.On
the other side, Tsereteli insisted on the necessity of a government
announcement that for Russia the war was exclusively one of defense.
The resistance of Milyukov and Guchkov was broken, and on March 27 it
was declared:

The
Russian people does not attempt to strengthen its external power at
expense of other people and does not set as its goal the enslavement
and humiliation of anyone. . . . But the Russian
people will not permit that its motherland should come out of the
World War humiliated and undermined in its vital resources.

The
defensist declaration of March 27 was not well-received by the
Allies, who saw in it a concession to the Soviet. The French
ambassador Maurice Paléologue complained of “the timidity and
indefiniteness” of the declaration.But
the Milyukov gamble to use the war against the revolution had taken
into account the real relationship of forces between the Provisional
Government and Soviets. He wanted, step by step, to increase the sway
of the former.A
few days later, a new meeting took place between representatives of
the government and those of the Soviet. Russia desperately needed a
loan from allies to continue the war; a new government memorandum
could help achieve this goal. On April 18, Milyukov sent a new note
to the Allied governments in which emphasized the will to “continue
the war in full agreement with the allies and to observe the
obligations towards them.”It
also claimed that the revolution had merely strengthened the popular
will to bring the war to a victorious conclusion. At a special night
session on March 19, the Executive Committee of Soviet discussed the
note. “It was unanimously and without debate acknowledged by all
that this was not at all what the Committee had expected,” declared
committee member Vladimir Stankevich.The Rabochaya
Gazeta,
a Menshevik newspaper, added that Milyukov’s note was a “mockery
of the democracy.” However, the prominent paper of the liberal
intelligentsia, Novoe
Vremya,
tried to defend it, stating that it was not possible to tear up
existing treaties.If
Russia did so, “our allies would also attain freedom of action: if
there is no treaty, no one has to observe it. . . . We
think that with exception of the Bolsheviks, all Russian citizens
will consider the basic thesis of yesterday’s note a correct one.”The
note caused a spontaneous explosion of popular indignation.
The Rabochaya
Gazeta wrote:

Petrograd
reacts sensitively and nervously. Everywhere, at street meetings, in
trams, passionate, heated disputes over the war take place. The caps
and handkerchiefs stand for peace; the derbies and bonnets for war.
In the working-class districts and in the barracks, the attitude
towards the note is more being expressed against the politics of
annexation.

Sukhanov,
a Menshevik and perhaps the best reporter of the Russian Revolution,
recalled vividly:

An
immense crowd of workers, some of them armed, was moving towards the
Nevsky from the Vyborg Side. There were also a lot of soldiers with
them. The demonstrators were marching under the slogans: “Down with
the Provisional Government!” “Down with Milyukov!” Tremendous
excitement reigned generally in the working-class districts, the
factories, and the barracks. Many factories were idle. Local meetings
were taking place everywhere.

On
the night of April 20, the Menshevik leaders of the Soviet asked the
government to send a new note correcting the Milyukov one in a
pacifist way, but in the end they accepted Kerensky’s Socialist
Revolutionary position that it was enough to offer an “explanation”
of the note.Despite
that, on April 21, there was a new wave of demonstrations, this time
steered and organized by the Bolsheviks. It was the first time since
the revolution that Lenin’s party was placed at the head and not
the tail of the movement. At the same time, on Nevsky Prospekt, armed
supporters of the government gathered, organized by Kadet Party.
According to the April 22 edition of Rabochaya
Pravda:

Yesterday
on the streets of Petrograd the atmosphere was even more agitated
than on April 20. In the [working class] districts a whole series of
strikes took place. . . . The inscriptions on the
banners were of a most varied nature, but all the same, one noted a
common feature: in the center, on Nevskii, Sadovaya and others,
slogans in support of the Provisional Government predominate; in the
outskirts, the opposite. . . . Clashes between
demonstrators of the different groups are frequent. . . .
There are many rumors of shootings.”

A
woman who participated in the demonstrations later wrote:

. . .the
women of these mills. . .moved with the demonstrators onto
Nevsky on the odd-numbered side. The other crowd moved in parallel
fashion on the even side: well-dressed women, officers, merchants,
lawyers, etc. Their slogans were: “Long live the Provisional
Government,” “Long live Milyukov,” “Arrest Lenin.”

The
tension in the worker neighborhood escalated. A factory worker
described one meeting that afternoon:

The
mood wavered. . . . It was decided to wait for a
decision from the Soviet. But before that decision could arrive some
workers returned from the center with news of clashes, the tearing of
banners and the arrests. . . . The mood suddenly
shifted. “What? They’re chasing us off the streets, tearing our
banners, and we’re going to watch this quietly from a distance?
Let’s move to Nevsky!”

In
this tense situation, General Kornilov — supported by Milyukov —
decided to deploy the artillery outside Mariinsky Palace and to
summon the military schools for support. The goal was to connect
sections of the army to the armed pro-government rally that was held
a few hundred meters away from the Bolshevik-led worker
demonstration. Milyukov, in his memoirs, trying to conceal the openly
counterrevolutionary nature of the initiative, argues:

On
April 21, General Kornilov, the commander-in-chief of the Petrograd
district, was informed about the demonstrations from the outskirts of
armed workers, and ordered several garrison units to be brought to
the Palace Square. He ran into the resistance of the Soviet Executive
Committee, who told the staff by telephone that the call of troops
could complicate the situation. After negotiations with delegates of
the Committee . . . the commander-in-chief canceled
his order and dictated in the presence of the committee members a
telephone message to all parts of the garrison troops, with an order
to remain in the barracks. After that, an appeal of the Executive
Committee posted on the streets announced that: “Comrade soldiers,
do not go out with arms in the troubled days without the call of the
Executive Committee.”

In
fact, the Executive Committee of the Soviet—understanding that the
counter-revolutionary character of the Kornilov decision threatened
to overwhelm them also—gave the order for troops not to leave their
barracks. Kornilov found himself isolated and without alternatives
other than retreat.The
risk for the leaders of the Soviet was a stalemate, so the Executive
Committee hastened to declare that the incident with the government
was resolved, and asked the workers to go back to their
homes. Rabochaya
Pravda ironically
noted that:

when
the Executive Committee published its order to the soldiers not to go
into the streets armed, one began to observe curious scenes where
soldiers tried to persuade their comrades to refrain in general from
participation in the demonstrations, whatever their character. Often
the soldiers also appealed to civilians for calm.

Kornilov
had assured Milyukov that he had “sufficient forces” to crush the
rebels, but these forces never materialized. Trotsky wrote, “This
light-mindedness will reach its highest bloom in August, when the
conspirator Kornilov will deploy against Petrograd a non-existent
army.” On the night of April 21, though some shots could still be
heard, the political crisis was over.Given
the balance of power in April 1917, the Bolsheviks were also
uninterested in an open battle pushing toward civil war. For the
first time the party of Lenin had played an important role in the
events, but it was not yet ready to lead the movement towards a new
revolution.The
soviets were still consolidating and under Menshevik hegemony. For
Lenin, a new revolution was still premature, and the slogan supported
by some Bolsheviks of “overthrowal of the government” had been
wrong:

Should
the Provisional Government be overthrown immediately? . . .
To become a power, the class-conscious workers must win the majority
to their side. . . . We are not Blanquists. . . .
We are Marxists, we stand for proletarian class struggle against
petty-bourgeois intoxication.

The
crisis had subsided, but nothing was as before. It became clear that
no government decision could pass without Soviet agreement. The
strategy of Kadets and the capitalist class thereafter shifted to
getting the socialists directly involved in the government. The main
condition for the involvement of the socialist parties in the cabinet
was the removal of Guchkov and Milyukov.After
their resignation, the Provisional Government made a proposal to the
Petrograd Soviet to form a coalition government. An agreement was
reached on April 22, and six socialist ministers joined the cabinet
(two Mensheviks, two Social-Revolutionary, and two Populists). Only
the president of the Executive of the Soviet Nikolay
Chkheidze refused to become a minister.The
Bolsheviks also refused to participate and instead prepared
themselves for the impending revolutionary struggles. In many ways,
the “April Days” strengthened the workers’ necessity for their
own self-organization and armed force. For example, the Skorokhod
Shoe Factory decided to form a Red Guard force of one thousand and
asked the Soviet for five hundred rifles and another five hundred
revolvers.On
April 23, at a meeting of factory delegates on the organization of
Red Guards, one speaker argued, “The Soviet put too much trust in
the Kadets. The Soviet doesn’t go out into the streets. The Kadets
did. Despite the Soviet, the workers went into the street and saved
the day.”The
April Days stiffened the resolve of Petrograd workers and soldiers.
The Milyukov Kadets were the short-term losers. The Mensheviks and
the SRs maintained their control over the Petrograd Soviet, but their
confidence was shaken. In the following months, the war and the
revolutionary crisis would deepen.>> The article above was written by Yurii Colombo, and is reprinted from Jacobin. Stay tuned for more installments!